Office - Buildings
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Yesterday, more than 400 commercial real estate professionals and elected officials gathered at the National Building Museum for the third annual Future Forum, a regional conference for public and private-sector leaders.
Conversions of office buildings for residential uses are becoming increasingly viable in some regions. According to Steven Paynter, a principal at Gensler who leads the firm’s global building transformation and adaptive use practice, office-to-residential conversions are viable in 25–30 percent of the buildings his team analyzes.
The second half of 2020 through to the following year was probably the busiest investment period in the two decades at Brookfield in the Asia Pacific region, according to the investment management firm managing partner and chief investment officer Lowell Baron. Baron spoke at a fireside chat session at the 2023 ULI Asia Pacific Summit opposite moderator Radha Dhir, JLL’s CEO and country head for India.
At a 2023 ULI Spring Meeting panel titled “View from the Top,” Tsering Yangki, executive vice president at Dream Unlimited, one of Canada’s leading real estate companies, with over $23 billion in assets across North America and Europe, spoke with WLI chair Ellen Klasson, managing director at RCLCO.
The ULI Foundation has announced that Alex J. Rose, executive vice president for Continental Development Corporation, has donated $1 million to support ULI’s Advisory Services program, which offers expertise and technical assistance to communities facing complex land use challenges. This gift is a contribution to the ULI Foundation’s first capital campaign, Our Cities, Our Future, which aims to raise $100 million in support of the Institute’s global mission.
When the Field Building on Chicago’s LaSalle Street opened in 1932, it was a technological and architectural marvel, with high-speed elevators, drinking fountains, and even air-conditioning, a first for the city. Nearly a century later, the 1.3-million-square-foot (120,774 sq m) Art Deco landmark is a pioneer of a different sort.
Office property owners who were able to weather the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic are crashing into a hard reality wrought by sharply lower demand and higher interest rates. Undercurrents of stress are now emerging in the form of defaults.
Jay Bailey, president and CEO of the Atlanta-based Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs, or RICE, is committed to championing Black entrepreneurs and creating unparalleled opportunities. Urban Land recently interviewed Bailey on the subject of how commercial real estate can be used to help close the racial wealth gap.
ULI has selected architect Hans Papke as the recipient of the 2021–2022 Apgar Thought Leader Award, which recognizes the authors of outstanding written works for Urban Land.
ULI and PwC US has released Emerging Trends in Real Estate ® 2023, an annual report highlighting the trends shaping the real estate industry. Insights from the report reconfirm two bifurcated market trends: aspects of the real estate industry are “normalizing” and reverting to pre-COVID patterns while others have permanently shifted to the “new normal” that was adopted with the pandemic.
ULI has released a case study on One Museum Place, a 250-meter-tall premium office tower with a six-story lifestyle podium located in downtown Shanghai. Developed by U.S.-based developer Hines, the mixed use project opened in March 2018, and has since won a number of green building certifications including LEED Platinum for Core and Shell and industry accolades including 2022 ULI Asia Pacific Excellence Award. Located next to Shanghai Natural History Museum and Sculpture Garden, One Museum Place is considered one of the city’s premium buildings.
Despite a forecast for higher inflation and rising interest rates, experts continue to have a favorable view on returns and performance for commercial real estate. However, the high tide of the improving economy is not raising all boats to the same level. There remains a clear bifurcation across and within property sectors.
The pandemic is a bit like jury duty: no one quite knows just how long it’s going to last. That analogy set the stage Tuesday morning for a panel discussion titled “Economic Outlook and What It Means for Real Estate”—with a keynote by Austan Goolsbee, professor of economics at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, followed by a discussion with Constance Moore, former president and chief executive officer of BRE Properties and a ULI trustee and governor, and Roy March, chief executive officer of Eastdil Secured, also a ULI governor.
Jonathan Rose, center, in conversation with Commissioner of the Chicago Department Planning and Development Maurice Cox, and Rebuild Foundation executive director Theaster Gates Jr. Rose, a long-time ULI Trustee, is founder and president of New York-based Jonathan Rose Companies, a national mission-driven real estate development, planning and investment firm. Rose Companies has long been a leader in green building practices, and enhancing the social, health and educational opportunities for residents through its Communities of Opportunity programming.
An “urban exodus” may be a myth, but a hybrid of office-based and non-office workplaces may become a norm, say panelists Richard Florida of the University of Toronto, Diane Hoskins of Gensler, and Mark Grinis of EY.
In October, the ULI Greenprint Center for Building Performance announced an additional goal to reduce the operational carbon emissions of its members’ collective buildings to net zero by the year 2050. Eleven ULI Greenprint members have already publicly committed to this target on top of the 50 percent carbon reduction goal by 2030 that all ULI Greenprint members have already pledged.
In a new survey conducted by ULI and EY, real estate professionals said that they overwhelmingly expect increased remote working, including more working from home (96 percent), more remote working away from the home (72 percent), and more use of satellite offices at the edge of cities (67 percent).
The ULI Center for Capital Markets and Real Estate’s latest semiannual consensus forecast of real estate and economic indicators anticipates a 5 percent decline in real gross domestic product (GDP) for this year, with increases of 3.6 percent and 3.2 percent in 2021 and 2022, respectively. The semiannual survey based on the median of the forecasts from 43 economists and analysts at 37 leading real estate organizations completed in late September through early October, also anticipates this year’s unemployment rate to be 8 percent, declining to 6.6 percent in 2021 and 5.5 percent the following year.
Industry experts from around the world convened both online and in person at the 2020 ULI China Mainland Summer Meeting in July. While many speakers were bullish overall, opinions were mixed on traditional office and retail as the economy recovers from the global pandemic.
Sidewalk Labs recently announced that it would withdraw from a proposed smart city project in Toronto. But Sidewalk is already in talks to repurpose those innovations, said participants in ULI’s Spring Meeting Webinar Series.
ULI has received the 2020 Excellence in Energy Star Promotion Award for its efforts in promoting energy-efficient and sustainable buildings, and its thought leadership on energy conservation throughout the real estate sector.
Panelists at the 2020 ULI Arizona Trends Day discussed how they are reducing the focus on abundant parking to provide more walkable open space which can be activated. One transit-oriented development in Tempe is billing itself as “car free” as it emphasizes bike lanes, walking, and access to light rail.
The U.S. Federal Reserve’s interest rate reductions, combined with continued economic growth, supported strong commercial real estate lending activity in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to the latest research from CBRE. The CBRE Lending Momentum Index, which tracks the pace of commercial loan closings in the United States, reached a value of 263 in December 2019—virtually unchanged from its third-quarter 2019 close and up 4.2 percent from a year earlier.
The Dodge Momentum Index, a monthly measure of the initial report for U.S. nonresidential building projects in planning, rose 6.9 percent month over month in October. The increase was due to a recovery in institutional planning projects, which had stepped back over the previous few months. Institutional planning moved 22.8 percent higher in the month while commercial planning lost 0.5 percent.
Hotels and office buildings are taking on many of each other’s characteristics in terms of design and use. This confluence has several drivers, among them the evolution of technology, shifts in guest and tenant expectations, and the increasing mobility of the American workforce.
The Dodge Momentum Index moved 4.1 percent higher in September to 143.6 from the revised August reading of 137.9. The gain in September was due entirely to an 8.9 percent increase in the commercial component, while the institutional component fell 4.8 percent.
The plan to develop a robust pipeline of tech talent—and to retain that talent—was one of the deciding factors driving Amazon’s choice of Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia, said speakers at the ULI’s 2019 Fall Meeting in Washington, D.C.
Whether making or adapting a building, district, campus, city, workspace, portfolio of properties, brand, or lifestyle, the human experience is central. Three examples from the United States and Canada illuminate how our cities are everyday places—small and forgotten places—waiting to be discovered and transformed into human-oriented social places.
According to a new report from Cushman & Wakefield, flexibile office space could triple in size in the coming years, representing 5 to 10 percent of office inventory in many markets. Investors also believe coworking is well positioned to weather an economic downturn.
While investment volumes in commercial real estate in Hong Kong were up strongly last year, flagship office buildings and prime development sites are beyond the reach of all but a handful of players. For most investors, more interesting opportunities lie in other, less-visible parts of the market. Rather than waiting for (and possibly missing) the next correction, investors who are willing to roll up their sleeves may find opportunities away from the spotlight.
